Writing should be valuable.

• identify the community of readers to whom it should be valuable

The purpose of writing is to change the reader's ideas.

New knowledge creation is not the purpose. Creating valuable knowledge is the purpose.

Writing helps your readers understand better, something they want to understand well.

Function of writing is to move the conversation further.

We all can participate in the world by changing other people's thoughts about the world.

Certain words like "anomaly", "inconsistency", "but", "however" and "although" create tension, challenge, contradict and point to a red flag.

• they point to instability

Your audience expects the paper to start with a problem, not with an explanation, definitions or generalizations.

• problems need to be located to the reader
  • something the reader wants to be fixed
• give background to the problem
  • describe the community or communities that have this problem
• only after you can move to a solution
  • solutions are only viable if the reader perceives the problem
• when you present the problem, it has to be unstable (use certain words)
• in the problem definition, show that the instability imposes a cost on them, the readers
  • or, conversly, if the instability is solved, it provides a benefit to them
  • language is different to cost/benefit thinking
    • does the inconsistency cost us anything?
    • if you improve the inconsistency do we benefit from it?

The paper should move forward from instability, not stability(definitions, generalizations etc).

If you say you found a gap in literature, you assume the knowledge is bounded.

• some are, but most are not
• gaps are not really problems in an unbounded system

Writing has a function. Understand the function.